When Google maps were not used, I was searching for the bus routes to reach British Museum from Croydon in the UK where I was staying for a short while. The purpose of my trip was not related to history, but I thought like having traveled so far, why can’t I visit the locations I was eager to explore. More importantly the Rosetta Stone.

If you ask me why I am so curious to understand my fascination, let’s go back to 2000. During my work on an exhibition about the evolution of scripts, my team and I delved into various writing systems. We had been talking about the Indic scripts and others across the world. If I was surprised to realize only a few scripts that started several millenniums ago and still in practice.

Indic and Chinese scrips are of the kind. However, this post focuses on something else. One of the interesting fact in this exercise is to document the deciphering the scripts – ie, origin or Cuneiform, Hieroglyphs, Mesoamerican scripts etc.

We are discussing about Egypt and its Rosetta stone. It contains same message was carved in the stone in more than one script forms.

Following our discussions, I worked on creating a compelling exhibition panel. I was so obsessed with Rosetta Stone and I paid special interest to come out with a better version of panel.

This stone was found in Egypt, but why do we need to talk about the British Museum? Because it is displayed over there. This story is similar to many others where artifacts are taken from their countries of origin and moved to Western museums—a practice that is not new.

There has been ongoing debate between Egypt and the UK, with Egypt requesting the return of the artifact. But I understood that UK thinks that it is good to be displayed in British Museum because, it attracts global audience, so it provided Egypt a replica of the same!

But politics is not the focus of this post, the artifact is.

In 1799, This stone was discovered in a fort in Rosetta, Egypt. It contained same message in three script forms – Egyptian hieroglyphic, then extinct, Egyptian demotic script and Greek of 4th to 1st centuries BCE. Demotic and Greek were known to researchers. So, both helped them to decipher Hieroglyphics.

I read about the stone and captivated it. The visit to the museum that day, was mainly focused on scripts and Indian arts. They had a original and a replica. Standing before the Rosetta Stone, memories of discussions with my Boss from years ago flooded back.

To read further –

Slides on Story of scripts – Prof S Swaminathan –

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